Samuel Singer, MD, FACS

I am a surgical oncologist who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of soft tissue sarcoma. I have extensive experience with this group of cancers, and am one of just a few surgeons in the world focused solely on treating sarcoma patients. My years of experience have enabled me to devise surgical techniques that improve the ability to completely remove these tumors.

I also have special expertise and experience in multimodality treatment, in which carefully planned surgery is combined, when appropriate, with radiation, chemotherapy, or targeted therapy.

I lead the Soft Tissue Sarcoma Disease Management Team at Memorial Sloan Kettering, which is a multidisciplinary group of soft tissue pathologists, medical oncologists, and radiation oncologists who work closely together to provide the best treatment plan for each individual patient.

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A challenge in treating soft tissue sarcomas is that there are more than 50 subtypes, each of which is relatively uncommon. Patients' outcomes are generally substantially better when they are managed by the sort of multidisciplinary team of experts that we can provide, in a center of excellence that treats many people with sarcoma. Our team of soft tissue sarcoma experts likely has the most extensive experience with these tumors of any medical group in the world.

The immediate goal of our research is to increase our understanding of sarcoma biology by discovering the alterations in DNA and RNA that cause sarcomas to develop and progress. These findings allow us to improve both the accuracy of diagnosis and the accuracy of predicting treatment outcome and survival for individual patients. These better predictions, in turn, will make it possible for patients to be given the treatment (such as a specific targeted therapy, chemotherapy, or radiation) most likely to be effective for their particular tumor.

Another goal of the research is to find new targeted therapies aimed specifically at alterations in particular tumor types. Examples of targeted therapies that I have been actively involved in developing and designing include anti-angiogenesis therapy for soft tissue sarcoma, imatinib (Gleevec®) for gastrointestinal stromal sarcoma, and cell cycle kinase inhibitor therapies (CDK4, AURKA, and PLK1), demethylating agents, HDAC inhibitors, and PPAR gamma ligands for various liposarcomas.

I am optimistic that this research will ultimately improve survival and quality of life for patients with soft tissue sarcoma.